


Random Snippets

by Ladygoshawk



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25930420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladygoshawk/pseuds/Ladygoshawk
Summary: Bits and bobs of SessKag-directed things that fell out of my head over the years. Some are related to each other, some aren't. Single scenes, story sections, smallish things I might never do anything more with. Some may be canon, some may be AU. Got a wild hair, figured I'd post them into a little collection just for kicks. Enjoy!
Relationships: Higurashi Kagome/Sesshoumaru
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	1. Rage

They had stolen her from off his lands, killed soldiers of the West to do so, and used the basest of magics to conceal their identity and path. His followers had proven unable to find the trail, but he had not left it up to them. As soon as he received the news, he took to the sky. Even he, a consummate hunter, had found the track nearly impossible to follow.

Still, he pursued them. He could not let the slight go unanswered, even if she had somehow escaped the carnage he’d found at the fortress where they had parted. That she had gone missing and none of his people knew exactly when or how made so much as a moment’s delay untenable to him.

He could not, _would not_ leave her in someone else’s hands. Quickly, he discovered that she had faith he would follow. She had left marks of her power, far between and very faint, to guide his pursuit.

They led him to a dark, foreboding castle perched high astride a mountain pass. The place reeked of humans, but the scent seemed old, faded. He stalked through the blood-spattered halls, enraged but aware that battle had touched this place, too.

Most of the stains had dried, dark and aged, at least a week old. Most, but not all. The Killing Perfection followed the freshest blood scent, aware that he had yet to encounter a single body, living or otherwise, unable to curb the low growl of fury that rumbled deep in his chest.

He followed a scent, her scent, as familiar to him as his own, but it had already begun to fade. Fresher than all other scents in the place, it still seemed at least two days old. That sole fact did not bode well for the outcome he desired, but he refused to consider it, yet. Instinct demanded he find her, first. He would act upon what he found.

The place felt coated in her power, another fact that grated on his already-raw nerves. A heavy dusting of reiki lay over everything, fading more quickly than the scent of her blood, just as it had in his fortress three days ago. When he noted the sheer weakness of the traces she’d left for him, he’d wondered if she had deliberately made them small to keep her captors from noticing or because she had expended too much of her energy in the battle over the outpost and had little left to use. Now, he knew…and knew, too, that she had used even more, here.

Logic suggested that she must certainly be weak, if she had not died. Instinct insisted that she would not, must not die. Either way, the situation had gained another level of urgency. So, too, had his rage.

After two days of tracking her, of not knowing, the evidence mounting under his very nose had his legendary control slipping. He felt certain his eyes had already tinted red with rage. Regardless of the outcome, someone would pay for this. Messily.

The scent of her blood led him up two floors, to the very top of the structure and the single room at its center. The shōji screen remained closed, but the paper had torn in several places. One tear gaped large enough, its edges coated in her blood, he could see into the room. In a pool of sunlight at the other end of the space, she lay on the tatami-covered floor.

Her head faced the door, eyes closed, skin far too pale, and hair in wild disarray around her. She did not move. If he could not hear her labored breath and the slow, faltering beat of her heart, he might have believed her already dead. He swept the shōji out of his way with a brittle snap that heralded the frame’s demise.

In half a heartbeat, he knelt at her side. Golden eyes swept over her, taking in the torn and bloodied state of her kimono. It had slid off one shoulder entirely, and parallel scores marred the skin beneath in deep, bloody gauges. The obi seemed only loosely wrapped around her middle, its knot long since lost.

A large, black bruise lay atop her left cheekbone, her eye swollen and brow split with another cut. Her lower lip showed similar damage. His control slipped a little more, his vision taking on a faint red film. Keenly aware of how fragile her humanity made her, how much more so she must now be, he brushed hair out of her face and laid his palm gently against her upturned cheek. “Kagome.”

To his surprise, her eyelids fluttered open, the left a little slower than the right. Glittering sapphire met his gaze, and the corners of her mouth turned up in the faintest of smiles as her lips parted. “…maru…” she breathed. Quickly, her eyes darted to something over his right shoulder. “ _Behind you_.”

He had sensed the presences in the room as he entered, but had ignored them in her favor. That she had awakened to his touch, to his voice, and her first act was to warn him meant that she had not yet given up. That she would refuse to die here with every fiber of her being, every gram of her considerable will. Relief and rage set his heart to pounding as he whipped around, tearing Bakusaiga from its sheath at his waist with his right hand as he lashed out with his dokkasō from the left.

The blade met flesh, parting skin, muscle, and bone like silk. Blood splattered. Cut neatly in two and sizzling as the blade’s poison continued the damage, a body dropped to the floor with two wet thumps. His hand wrapped around a traitorous throat he recognized, claws sinking into flesh as he lifted the fool off the floor. He jerked the male he held closer, snarling in his face.

“ _Why?_ ”


	2. Caught

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Caught" is a modern AU unrelated to any other chapters in this collection.

* * *

“Nnn-guuuuuuuuh, Kagome, if you would just listen for a minute—”

“No!” The word cut across the space between them like a katana. “No, Inuyasha, I have listened. I have always listened. And you know what? I am done listening to you. Now, you will listen to me!”

He blinked, shocked, and stared at the glowing fingertip she waved in his face. Blue eyes fairly crackled with rage, but the glow on the end of that delicate digit popped and snapped against his aura as if itching to strike out at him. He knew better than to push, with her in this mood. Snapping his mouth shut, he forced his eyes to meet hers, honey-amber to sapphire.

As he’d expected, she didn’t wait. “Every. Single. Time. I have listened. You promised _._ You swore you’d stop. Swore it would never happen again.”

That glowing finger jabbed at his face, close but not making contact. “I listened. And I believed. But not once. Not once! Not even one time did you ever hear what I had to say to you. And I let you get away with it.” The last came out in a credible snarl.

“Well, not any more.” She actually stomped a foot. “This is it. The last time. You will not get yourself off the hook this time, you liar, because this time, I am telling you that I am no longer your girl!”

“W-Wait, what?” He goggled at her as she snatched her purse up from the table beside the door and rummaged keys out of its depths. “No, Kagome, that’s not—”

“I’m not finished!” She snarled again, flattening his ears to his head with the glare she gave him. “I realized something today. Do you want to know what I realized? I don’t care whether you want to know or not, I’m going to tell you.”

Now she waved her keys in his face. “What I realized today had to do with walking by a restaurant window during lunch hour and seeing you at a table with her, making moony-eyes at each other. It had to do with just how angry that made me. But do you know who I’m angry with?”

“K-Kag—” The sound started as a whimper, cut off as she answered herself.

“I realized I’m angry with myself. I am angry that I didn’t even notice when I stopped caring enough to get angry when I catch you cheating. Can you believe it? You have to actually care for someone in order for them to manage to make you angry when they wrong you!”

She sniffed derisively. “At least, I do. I discovered today that I don’t care, anymore, and the only reason I’m angry right now is that I did not even realize it in time to cut ties with you before this very second.”

Suddenly, she beamed at him. “So. That’s it. Thank you, Inuyasha, for being such a self-centered bonehead that you really thought I’d put up with you forever. Thank you for making me realize how easy it is to get into a habit of forgiving people even when their apologies don’t mean anything. But most of all, thank you for not knowing when enough is enough, and showing me just how wrong for me you really are.”

“Wait...K-Kagome, no, wait, please…” He lurched forward as she spun toward the massive front door, reaching desperately for her arm in an effort to arrest her headlong flight out of his life. The unthinking motion only earned him a burnt hand for his trouble.

“I’m not interested in hearing it again,” she sniffed as she pulled the door open. “Go tell her. I’m sure she’ll be happy to listen to you. That is, if you can get her to pay you any attention at all after this afternoon.”

Her icy tone froze him in the midst of cradling his singed hand in the other. “Wh-What?”

“Oh, hasn’t she told you?”

“Told me…”

He’d never seen a smile like that on her, before. It tore at him, her eyes cold, the expression never actually touching them. “She’s my older cousin, Inuyasha, and she’s spent the entirety of both our lives doing everything she could to take away anything that might make me the slightest bit happy. I’m not really sure why. I never asked.”

She waved her keys at him again. “I’m on my way over to let her know she’s won, and she can have you. I don’t really know what that’ll mean for the two of you, but that’s not my problem. Turns out, it never was. Have a nice evening.”

The door slammed shut behind her like the clap of doom, leaving him staring blankly at the heavy paneling. For some reason, the way she’d left, everything she’d said, left him feeling as if a huge chunk of ice had taken up residence somewhere in his chest. She’d gotten mad at him before, sure, but she’d always forgiven him. Even for cheating on her.

This must’ve been the fifth time she’d caught him, but he’d never actively lied to her, not really. He’d always meant to stop. He just…couldn’t. Somehow, he always talked himself into just one more fling, just one little night out, a single lunch date, and that’d be it…

Only it never turned out that way, and after the first couple he’d known it wouldn’t. That once he started, he wouldn’t stop until she found out again. He never really tried to hide it, either, so she always found out. His sweet, caring, loving Kagome had always forgiven him, though, and he’d believed she’d always understood. At least…until this time.

Suddenly, he became aware of a very low, nearly-subsonic sound coming from somewhere behind him. At the same time, an undeniable feeling of foreboding seeped into his somewhat stunned awareness. Slowly, he turned to face whatever stood behind him…

…to find his father standing in the doorway to the kitchen, lips curled, fangs bared in that ominous, rumbling snarl, and eyes touched ever so slightly with pink around the edges.

_Oh. Shit._


	3. Surgeon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Surgeon" is a post-canon AU in which the Well did not reopen and Kagome never made it back to Sengoku Jidai.

* * *

“You don’t mean that! You can’t! We’re in love!”

“I’m sorry, but this was our last date. I don’t want to go out with you anymore.”

“Is there someone else? You can’t! I love you!”

“No, that isn’t—”

“He can’t have you! I can’t live without you! I’ll never let him have you!”

Revving engine, squealing tires.

Panicked screams.

Bone-jarring crunch.

Falling.

Blackness.

* * *

 _This…is not right._ He stood in the doorway of the hospital room, frozen in place by the scents that wafted through the door when he’d opened it. _It cannot be._

The figure in the room’s single bed lay swathed in blankets and gauze, connected by tubes and wires to a bank of computers on one side and a respirator on the other. An intravenous drip hung from the stand attached to the head of the bed, clicking and whirring at intervals as it delivered medicine into the patient’s system through the needle in her arm. Her condition, according to the chart in his hand, had stabilized but remained poor. She had lain pinned beneath the twisted wreckage of a car for a considerable time before the first responders had managed to free her.

“It’s amazing she’s still alive, huh?” a soft voice asked from behind him. “Are you going in?”

The sound reminded him of what he was supposed to be doing, and he stepped into the room to clear the doorway. His companion followed, moving to the opposite side of the bed to check the computer there.

“The team that brought her in said she was awake and talking to them the entire time they tried to free her,” he continued. “I guess she told them the guy she was with put the car over the cliff on purpose. She must’ve been in shock, because they said she never complained about pain, and wouldn’t let them give her anything until they got her into the ambulance. She passed out on the way in.”

These details were not in the chart, irrelevant as they were to her medical condition. He suppressed a frown as he looked the medical details over. “Why have you called me in, Doctor Miwa? Merely to consult?”

The smaller man turned to fix him with a hopeful look. “Actually, I hope you’ll take her surgeries on. She’s going to need a few, I think.”

“More than a few. Her legs have been crushed. You have seen this chart. This woman requires a team of surgeons.” Now he allowed himself a small frown. “Why is there no name?”

“Oh, that didn’t come in until the police brought her things. I guess the nurse didn’t put the sticker on, yet.” He leaned over the woman in the bed, turning her ID bracelet until he could read it. “Higurashi, Kagome, twenty-six years old.”

Long-faded memory assailed him. The surname meant nothing to him, but he’d heard her name many times, long ago. He took a pen from his pocket and added her name to the chart. “Family?”

“On the train, inbound from Tōkyō. I spoke to her mother myself. Seemed like a nice woman. She took the news well, though.”

“I trust you did not tell her everything over the phone?”

“Of course not. Just that Miss Higurashi had been in an accident and is here. She said she’d be on the train within the hour.”

“She is barely stable, apparently comatose. There is no way to be certain she will survive such extensive injuries. It is early to call me in.” _She will survive. It is what she does._

The emergency physician nodded, smiling faintly. “I know, but you’re right, she’s going to need a surgical team. That sort of thing takes time to put together. I wanted to get the ball rolling.”

“What makes you believe she will survive to require it?”

“I…don’t really know. None of her injuries are all that bad, individually, considering what caused them. Taken together, it’s a bit of a grim picture, but it really could be worse. I noticed while we were working on her that she’s already got quite a bit of scar tissue. I just have this feeling she’s a survivor.”

 _You have no idea, Miwa_. His gaze slid to their patient. The upper half of the woman’s face was covered in gauze, but the lower half matched images long since burned into his memory. Her first name matched other memories. Even so, he would not have considered those memories if it were not for the scent that floated lightly over the heavier scents of blood and disinfectant, sterile gauze and adhesive.

His over-sensitive nose had long since become used to such common medical smells, as well as the usual stink of fear, sorrow, and anxiety. Constant exposure had caused him to tune those scents out whenever he walked the halls of medicine. What had stopped him in the doorway, in her doorway, was the mingling of jasmine and sandalwood with the peculiar zing of latent reiki. Already, he could feel her power rising sluggishly to heal her.

 _How?_ He wondered, stunned all over again. _How can she be here? Now? It is not possible!_

Yet there she lay, badly wounded, smelling exactly as he remembered her. He had never encountered another being, alive or dead, who carried a scent anything like this. Anything like hers. Add it to her physical appearance, to her name, and there could be no doubt. The single most powerful miko ever to live lay in that bed, attached to a respirator, and no one knew it but he.

“Will you take her case?”

He blinked, recalled once more by his colleague’s voice. “Hn.”

Miwa took that as agreement, his smile widening. “Excellent.”

“You will meet her mother, explain her situation. I will assemble my team beginning tomorrow. You are the ER attending tomorrow, as well?”

“No. I have rounds and office hours the rest of the week.”

“Good. Page me when you make your rounds. You may introduce me to her family then.” He moved toward the door, suddenly anxious to be anywhere but in that room. His need to think, to consider her sudden reappearance, grew more pressing by the moment.

“Thank you, Doctor Taishō.”

“Hn.”

* * *

“Ah, and here he is.” Doctor Miwa’s voice greeted his colleague as he walked into a private waiting room the following afternoon. “Doctor Akira Taishō is our Chief of Surgery, Mrs. Higurashi. He doesn’t often see patients, but I asked him to take on your daughter’s case because she’s going to need some very specialized care to heal fully. He’ll head up a team of doctors and surgeons who will be able to provide Miss Kagome the very best care.”

An elderly man in priest’s garb sat closest to the door. Beside him, directly across from Doctor Miwa, sat a moist-eyed woman who could be none other than their patient’s middle-aged mother. Except for her eye color, the miko of his memories was the youthful spitting image of this woman.

To her left sat a young man in his late teens. He, too, looked much like his mother. He could only be a younger sibling to the woman in the hospital bed down the hall.

All three appeared exhausted, worn with worry and the long night. He nodded to them, offering his business card, before settling into a seat beside his colleague. Miwa completed the introductions, and then the surgeon gave a brief explanation of what he would do and who must be brought in.

“This will be a very long, slow process,” he concluded. “What I have spoken of is only a rough outline we will tailor as your daughter heals. For the moment, her most serious injuries are the fractures to her skull.”

“She does not appear to have sustained significant brain injury, though we will not be certain of that until she awakens. I have scheduled an orthopedic specialist to pay her a visit this evening. You have been provided the medical history forms?”

The matriarch appeared slightly overwhelmed. She blinked at his question, then nodded. “Oh, yes. It’s just, I… Kagome was…out of touch…with us for a few years before she moved out here to go to school, so I don’t have complete information.”

Doctor Miwa leaned forward to lay a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Mrs. Higurashi. Anything you can provide us will help.”

He nodded, choosing to ignore the faint disapproval that colored his colleague’s scent as he gestured to the card the woman still held. Understanding of the how still eluded him, but he knew with certainty just why the young woman had been “out of touch” with her family for a few years. He had never encountered a human with more honor, before or since he had met her. “If you have any questions or concerns, please contact myself or Doctor Miwa. We will do our best for her.”


	4. New Year's Dread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "New Year's Dread" is a tiiiiiiiiiny modern AU with no relation to any other chapters in this collection.

* * *

“I wish to apologize in advance for my family.” Sesshōmaru helped his fiancé on with her coat, wishing something would come up to prevent their having to attend this insane family gathering. A catastrophic earthquake, perhaps, or some kind of war. “Some of them are not what I would call ‘sane’. Most of them.”

Kagome laughed and turned to face him as she settled her coat in place. She lifted her hands to frame his face, stroking her thumbs over his cheek stripes. “You put up with my crazy family, including my grandfather flinging ofuda at you, last year. I am not going to break up with you because your father’s an old lecher or your brother’s a bit of an ass. Your stepmother and sister sound lovely.”

“They may be the only sane ones,” he groused. “Except that Izayoi married and mated my father, so even that is questionable.”

She laughed again and went up on tiptoe to press her lips to his in an all-too-brief kiss. “It’ll be _fine_. Worst case, they all find out exactly why they shouldn’t push me past the boundaries I set, and we have a slightly awkward New Year. Which, I _promise_ , I will save as a very last resort!”

“Perhaps you could open with such a display?” he asked hopefully as she fastened her coat. “Preferably before we get into the house.”

She chuckled and whacked him lightly in the chest with the back of her hand. “No. We’re going to be married and mated, and my family’s met you. It’s only fair your family get to meet me before the wedding. I know you haven’t told them much about me. You’ll just have to suffer through this holiday.”

He suppressed a sigh and reached for the door. “We will see if you feel the same after you have met them. I am less concerned about my father. He has begun to hint that the family requires a new generation of heirs. I doubt he will want to frighten you off before the wedding, so he will likely be on his best behavior. My half-brother, however…”

“So he’s a little lacking in manners,” she dismissed the irritating bane of his existence with an airy wave of her hand. “I work with Shippō, Kōga and Miroku, remember? I have plenty of practice dealing with pranksters, crass jerks, and perverts. Stop worrying about it.”


	5. Shikon Diner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Shikon Diner" is a modern AU with no relation to any other chapter in this collection.

* * *

Yōkai, nature spirits or demons depending upon who you spoke to, still lived in the world, but carefully. Secretly. Their numbers had decreased drastically over the centuries for many reasons, chief among them conflict with other yōkai or with humans, their own slow reproductive cycles, the loss of territory and natural, life-giving habitat. Those who survived learned to conceal their true natures by magic or procured assistance to do so, that they might blend in among the humans who had begun to prosper and proliferate all across the land.

It had taken him more than a century to bend to the new way of the world, but eventually even the great Dog General, Sesshōmaru, had acquired the means to conceal his yōkai appearance and considerable yōki. The daiyōkai, Lord of the Western Lands, turned his unmatched battle skills and strategic mastery to the arena of human business and trade. Within two centuries, he had established both a strong “family” line, in truth only a succession of assumed human identities, and a business empire that controlled most of Japan and even maintained branches all across the globe.

Though it had been forced into shadows, still much of yōkai society and tradition remained. As Lord of the West, he had been one of the Cardinal Lords of Japan. By treaty or conquest, and sometimes both, he took over one territory after another. Eventually, he held all of Japan in his claws, and was recognized as Lord of Japan.

With authority and influence spanning two worlds, he had become the most powerful being in East Asia. Whether he also surpassed other beings around the world, he did not know, nor care to know. Throwing himself into ruling his twin empires, and ruling well, inspired loyalty to him in his underlings. His position became unassailable…and he grew bored.

Believing that he should, at last, turn his attention to securing an heir for all he had wrested from the world, he set himself to search for a mate. The search did not go nearly so easily as he expected. While he had only to crook a finger at any one of the dozens of willing females who presented themselves to him, he found himself unwilling to do so. Not one among them held his regard for more than a few moments, and he refused to tie himself in a mating to someone whose presence he could not stomach for the rest of his very long life.

He also refused to inflict the disaster his parents’ mating had become on any pup of his own. His mother had died bitterly, his father in defense of a human mistress and their newborn, hanyō pup. The half-brothers resented each other for centuries, and after more than half a millennia still barely tolerated the presence of their sole surviving blood relative.

Still, casting a wider net for his search could not be done lightly. Already he had offended a number of vassals by refusing their sisters and daughters. Ready to wash his hands of the idea entirely, he sent for the Oracle.

A yōkai so old her name and vision had been lost to time even before his birth, her steel-grey hair fell to the floor and dragged behind her with the train of her kimono. Despite her age, she moved gracefully, her body strong as she settled on the cushion across from his. He knew she rarely left her high mountain home, rarely delivered prophecy in person. He had sent what she required along with his inquiry. That she came to him in Tōkyō surprised him as much as it did the Yōkai Court.

She smiled at him, a knowing expression more unnerving than anything he had ever faced in his long life. “And so you are young Tōga’s eldest pup, Sesshōmaru. His ‘Killing Perfection’.”

She paused, sightless gaze scanning over him as if she could yet see. “You have lived up to his expectation, youngling, and far surpassed your sire. I have brought your answer myself because I wished to confirm what my Sight told me about you. I almost could not bring myself to believe it, that there was no other magic moved to change or cloud what I Saw.”

Through centuries-long habit, he kept his irritation out of both expression and voice. “This Sesshōmaru was unaware such interference is possible.”

“Oh yes.” She chuckled softly. “It is possible, though none have tried it in a very long time, and none have succeeded in far longer than that. Still what I Saw made me wonder, and so I came. I See now that there is no interference, nor any attempt to influence your answer.”

“And the answer?”

Aged, milky eyes took on the yellow glow of power. The Oracle straightened and went still as her yōki rose in great billows around her. “You will find your mate, Lord Sesshōmaru, but she has not yet been reborn into this world. Even so, your fate and hers are already deeply entwined, so deeply that you will know each other in the moment that you first meet…though it may take you some time to recognize each other. She will seem very young to you, dread Lord, but in truth she is far older, older even than me.

“She is nothing you expect, but everything you need. You will find yourself hard-pressed to match her, but when you do, it will be a perfect match. And you must match her, for already a dark cloud gathers to take her and what she guards. Only by rising together to meet it may it be overcome and your combined futures come to fruition. If either of you falter…it will end in destruction.”

He allowed himself a soft growl as the glow faded from her eyes. “Your prophecy makes little sense, Oracle. That she has not yet been born makes her young, far too young to hold the power you describe.”

“Even so, my Lord, I have said only what I have Seen.” Again, she gave that disconcerting, knowing smile. “I have only two more things to say. She will be born here, in Japan, under your very nose. If you follow your instinct, you will be mated before another half-century has passed. Believe me or not, as you choose, but recall that my Sight has never failed in five thousand years.”

She left him then, gliding gracefully out of the room while he remained seated, stunned and hovering between rage and disgust, elation and foreboding. Eventually, he settled into confusion as details rose out of his memory and gave him even more food for thought.

_“You will find your mate…but she has not yet been reborn into this world.” “If you follow your instinct, you will be mated before another half-century has passed.”_

It didn’t match. Even if this paradox of a female were born within the week, yōkai required two to three centuries to reach maturity, depending upon their breed. Females of some breeds required less time, but he had never heard of any that reached breeding readiness, mating readiness, before the middle of their second century of life.

_“She will seem very young…in truth she is far older than you, older even than me.”_

He growled again, irritation rising. Not yet born, but older than even the prophetess? Not possible! The simple reckoning of time rendered the idea ridiculous!

_“You will find yourself hard-pressed to match her, but when you do, it will be a perfect match._ ”

That, too, did not fit. Could not fit. Yōkai grew stronger, gaining power, as they aged. He had already seen nearly a thousand years of life, and he had begun it as the firstborn son of a daiyōkai Cardinal Lord.

He had the power of a daiyōkai in his own right before he passed into his second century. For most of his life, he had fought, trained, shed blood to increase and master his own power. A female pup less than fifty years old could never hope to match his level, much less require him to work to match her!

_“…you will know each other in the moment that you first meet…may take you some time to recognize each other.”_

Even this part of the prophecy created a mess of contradiction, and it made more sense than the rest of it! How could they know each other, but not recognize each other? He sorted through the possible meanings of each word, a faint frown creasing his brow. After some time he could, just barely, see a way it might be true. If their power meshed upon first meeting, but they did not initially acknowledge the connection…perhaps.

_“…already a dark cloud gathers to take her and what she guards. Only by rising together to meet it may it be overcome and your combined futures come to fruition. If either of you falter…it will end in destruction.”_

That, he liked not at all. It suggested some force, already active within his territory, would rise to try to take what was his. Would try to destroy what belonged to him, his mate, his pack, his empires. The very thought put a silent snarl on his lips. He would never allow such interference! Any foolish enough to try would die.

Angry again, he rose abruptly and stalked to the window to glare out at the moonlit city spread below him. His claws raked the sill, leaving deep furrows in their wake. The Oracle had given him a ridiculous prophecy, so full of contradictions and impossibilities that it could not be borne, much less believed. It left him on the verge of disregarding her entirely, angry that he had wasted so much time with such foolishness. And yet…

_“…recall that my Sight has never failed in five thousand years.”_

In the long recorded history of yōkai, far, far longer than she had suggested, the Oracle had never given a false foreseeing. Even if this…pile of ridiculous impossibilities seemed precisely that, it had come to him from her lips. As he stared over Tōkyō from his penthouse, a vague plan began to take shape in his mind. He would tell his nobles the Oracle had revealed now was the wrong time for him to take a mate. It was only the truth. She had said he would meet her, so while he waited, he would watch for this darkness that was supposed to try to take her. While he did not truly believe this incredible prophecy…he would keep a wary eye out. Fifty years amounted to a mere blink in time, for him. He could wait and see.

* * *

The Shikon Diner in downtown Tōkyō occupied an easy-to-miss lower space in the bottom of a building that otherwise housed several small, mediocre business offices. The eatery’s entrance opened off a short alley, and while the proprietor had put a small sign on the corner of the building, it still received only moderate traffic from the street. Most of its patrons quickly became regulars, office workers of varying calibers from the local area who had stumbled on it by chance and continued to return for the quality of the food.

They specialized in traditional Japanese cuisine, and so far as most of their clientele was concerned, their chef had mastered her chosen field. The kitchen ran as tightly as any general drilled their soldiers. The proprietor himself served as the sushi chef at the counter in the front, and he, too, was a master of his trade. Ingredients were always as fresh as humanly possible, far fresher than at most human establishments, and the flavors from both kitchen and counter returned their consumers to a simpler, more glorious time.

The door chime jangled as the portal swung open, and the man behind the sushi counter looked up from his customers with a disarming smile. “Ah, Mr. Taishō, welcome back! What will it be, today?”

“Tea, Mrs. Hōshi,” Sesshōmaru answered, though in this “human” life they knew him as Seishirō. He continued across the floor to his favorite table, a Western-style arrangement far easier to occupy in his immaculate Western suit. “And the usual.” He paused, considering. A new scent teased his nose. “No, make it larger. I skipped breakfast, today.”

He hadn’t, of course. As yōkai, he did not require sustenance nearly so often as humans did, so he only ate anything when he could not avoid it, for appearance’s sake. Mostly. The two lunches a week he spent at the Shikon were the exception – his own exception, as the place had become a welcome respite from the constant press of irritations at his office. His appearance at the eatery twice a week had become routine, though not strictly necessary.

A faint frisson of human spiritual energy pressed his shoulder in a mild, good-natured rebuke. “That’s no good!” the monk-turned-restaurateur admonished with a grin. “One large set, coming up!”


End file.
